The Rich Are Different

by Susan Howatch

  I felt as if someone had walloped me over the head with a sledgehammer. I got up, blundered against a chair, caught sight of my face in the mirror and began to scrabble frantically for my makeup. My hair had a stringy uncombed appearance, and my nightdress, torn at the shoulder, looked as if it had been rescued from a jumble sale. My mind felt blank, bleak and beaten.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh, God,” I said. I grabbed my best negligee and reached for my powder puff. There was barely time to take the shine off my nose before the doorbell rang again.

  “The bell’s ringing, Mummy!” called Alan.

  “Yes, darling.” I could not cope at all. Flaying my hair with the brush, I tried to remember the brilliant dialogue I had invented the night before. Naturally I could not remember a word.

  “Can I open the door?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “It’s Papa, Mummy!”

  I dropped the hairbrush, glanced in the glass and saw Paul in the doorway.

  “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Yes,” I said, knees shaking.

  He smiled gently at Alan. “Can you help Mary get breakfast or are you too little?”

  “No, I’m big! I often help get breakfast!” boasted Alan, and pattered away proudly to the kitchen.

  Paul locked the bedroom door. “Steve told me you were at the party,” he said. “Caroline told me Bruce had taken you home. Mayers found a young bond salesman called Craig Harper who recalled pointing out my wife to you while she was waiting for me by the fountain.”

  I was pulverized. I opened my mouth to stammer, “Paul, I’m really not capable of scenes like this at seven o’clock in the morning,” and then I realized that this was exactly why he had chosen to call at such an appalling hour.

  I stared at him. He was immaculate, his black suit perfectly tailored, his shirt snow white, his tie dark and discreet, and as I saw him watching me with expert intentness I felt the first flicker of a slow scorching rage.

  I found my voice. “Your wife’s beautiful,” I said. “I was delighted to have the opportunity to see her. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “I suspected you might have been upset, and I thought perhaps I should explain—”

  “Why you lied when you said you were going to Connecticut on Friday night when in fact you’d planned a dinner à deux at Voisin’s with your wife? Oh, come, Paul! Let’s be sophisticated about this! You wanted to take your wife out to dinner—well, why not? After all, she is your wife! And since you awoke the next morning feeling too ‘exuberant’ to bury yourself in Connecticut—goodness me, what a night that must have been!—why shouldn’t you have decided to take Sylvia to your best friend’s party? After all, she is your wife! I don’t deny I was a little surprised to discover she’s twenty years younger than you and no doubt the belle of every ball she attends, but then life’s full of little surprises, isn’t it, and I really couldn’t have expected you to give me a detailed description of her. Of course, it would have been interesting to know you still slept with her and that she obviously adores you, but I can’t complain, can I, Paul? That wouldn’t be playing the game at all!”

  He said nothing. His dark eyes were expressionless.

  “You and your games!” I said with a laugh. “What fun we have with them, don’t we? Oh yes, I adore your games, Paul, but there’s just one snag you may have overlooked: I don’t like your bloody rules!”

  There was another silence. At last he said in a low voice, “The situation isn’t as you think it is.”

  “Don’t try and tell me you’re not sleeping with her, Paul, because I simply shan’t believe you.”

  His face hardened. “I never promised you fidelity.”

  “Oh yes you damned well did!” I shouted at him. “You implied it when you asked me to come here! You knew me—you knew I wouldn’t come to New York just to be your tart who could amuse you whenever you became bored with your perfect wife! You know I’m not that kind of woman, Paul, so how dare you now treat me as if I had no pride, no self-respect and no damned shred of common sense!”

  “I’d better come back later,” he said shortly, turning to unlock the door. “It’s obvious that you’re now incapable of listening to explanations.”

  I was at once terrified of him leaving. “Paul …” I gasped before I could stop myself, and as if on cue he spun to face me.

  “Listen, Dinah,” he said in a quick urgent voice, “you must—please—make some effort to understand. When I was ill Sylvia stood by me, and I just cannot ignore her or abandon her now as you might wish—it’s impossible. Try and be patient. You know how important you are to me.”

  “As important as a bottle of medicine which gets thrown away as soon as the patient recovers!”

  He went sheet-white.

  I was too angry to care. “My dear Paul,” I said acidly, “you may think I’m hopelessly naïve, but before we met I spent some time living with a man your age and I’m not so ignorant about the problems of middle-aged men as you might think. My father was always recalling his favorite girl friend whenever he ran into temporary difficulties with his wife.”

  I had partially redeemed my mistake by not mentioning the disastrous word “impotence,” but I fully expected some explosion of wrath. It never came. In fact when I nerved myself to look at him again I saw to my astonishment that he was neither furious nor humiliated but curiously relieved. Finally he even laughed.

  “My dear,” he said amused with all his old urbanity, “I think you’re on dangerous ground if you start to compare me with your father! Take it as a compliment that when I really needed a woman the first person I turned to was you.”

  “But—”

  “I’m glad you realize how important you are to me. Now I know this is a difficult situation, but I know too that you’re intelligent enough to see beyond the present awkwardness to the long-term pattern of the future.” He had moved slowly towards me until we were only inches apart, and as he started speaking again he took me in his arms. “I’m extremely sorry you were upset last night. As you know, I wouldn’t have upset you for the world.” He paused to kiss me. His hands slipped between the facings of my negligee. “All I ask is for you to be patient.”

  I found my tongue. “You’re asking me to share you with Sylvia,” I said, “but I can’t do that. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  “If you care for me—”

  “I love you more than anyone else in the world, but there’s no future in a three-sided love affair.”

  He could have had an easy victory then. All he had to do was say “I love you” and my resolve would have crumbled like rotten wood, but instead he said abruptly as he turned away from me, “Your trouble is that you really love no one but yourself.”

  “That makes two of us!” I shouted in rage and terror as he strode to the door.

  As the door was wrenched open Alan, who had been pressing against the panels, fell headlong into the room and began to cry.

  “Alan, I’m sorry!”

  “Poor darling!”

  We helped him to his feet, kissed him better and made an unnecessary fuss of him. Alan loved it. He clung to Paul’s hand and sobbed emotionally against my bosom until finally, wrinkling his nose at the smell of bacon, he ran off to see if breakfast was ready.

  “You’ll forgive me if I leave you now,” said Paul politely, “but I see no point in continuing our discussion.”

  I stared at the ground. My whole will was bent on the task of remaining silent and I hardly knew how to stop myself begging him to stay.

  He left. The door closed. His footsteps receded into the distance and I heard the whine of the lift as it responded to his summons.

  I dashed out into the hall.

  “Paul!”

  But the doors of the lift had already closed and he was gone without a backward glance.

  IV

  At eleven o’clock, unable to endure my misery a moment longer, I telephoned Terence O’Reilly. Alan and
Mary had gone out for their Sunday-morning walk so I was alone in the apartment. I was still in my negligee. After the iciness of Paul’s withdrawal I had been too numb with shock to either eat, dress or cry.

  “Something wrong?” said Terence sharply when he heard my voice.

  “Everything. You were mistaken. He’s sleeping with her again.”

  There was a silence. Finally he said, “I don’t believe it.”

  “He admitted it to me. He won’t leave her.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “Well …”

  “Wait a moment. We can’t talk about this over the phone. Let me come over.”

  “Oh Terence, I’m not even dressed!”

  “All right. You come down to me whenever you’re ready. You’ve got my address, haven’t you? I’ll have a drink waiting for you and we can talk this over.”

  I almost wept at the thought of seeing someone sympathetic. Thanking him, I rang off and went to have a bath.

  I did feel better once I was dressed. Alan and Mary were still out, so I left a note for them before taking a taxi to Terence’s flat.

  The townhouse in which he lived stood on a pretty tree-lined street west of Washington Square, and his spartan flat occupied the whole of the top floor. The modern furniture was cool and expensive, like a model room in an exhibition, and the living room was not only spotlessly clean but immaculately tidy. His pictures were ruthless modern abstracts and there were no photographs, no bric-a-brac, no clues to the past.

  “Let me introduce you to the genuine American martini cocktail,” he said, offering me a glass of pale liquid. “I think you’ll find it soothing.”

  I also found it made me garrulous, and after only one sip I was pouring out every detail of the disaster. He listened without interrupting and when I had finished he offered me a cigarette without comment.

  “Terence, for God’s sake say something!”

  “Finish your drink and I’ll fix you another. He did imply, didn’t he, that the future was going to be different?”

  “That was just to soften me up.” I felt miraculously placid, able to voice painful truths without feeling any pain. “I say, this is a jolly nice drink, isn’t it!”

  He refilled my glass.

  “I think I understand the situation now,” I murmured, still marveling at my composure. “He loves me best, I’m sure of that, but he’s shackled to her because she’s one of those women who build their entire existence around their husbands with the result that they have no lives of their own. If he left her she’d just wither away, like a Victorian heroine, and he’d blame me when he inevitably ended up feeling guilty and miserable.”

  “Trash. She’d survive. And once he’d left her she’d go to bed with me and like it.”

  “Well, I concede you may know Sylvia better than I do, but I know Paul. He’s not going to leave her. He’s a Victorian and not only true to his double standard but morally bound by it. He’s devised this incredibly old-fashioned game in which he’s allowed to have any number of mistresses so long as he never breaks the cast-iron rule which demands he stays married to his wife, and if you think he would ever break that rule you don’t understand what being a Victorian’s all about Paul may be immoral by conventional standards, but he’s not amoral. He has a rigid moral code and he’s never going to embrace the twentieth century by deviating from it. You won’t find Paul trying to maneuver a quick divorce! You won’t find Paul walking out on a perfect wife! And you certainly won’t find Paul risking a trip to England and falling in love with Mallingham again!”

  I stopped. We stared at each other. His green eyes were dark with some emotion which I could not identify but found deeply disturbing.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Oh!” I was so startled that the liquid jumped in my glass. “Who’s that? Are you expecting someone?”

  “Not a soul. Relax and stay right where you are.” He moved out into the hall to open the front door.

  “ ’Lo, Terence!” said Bruce Clayton’s voice. “Excuse me for stopping by unannounced, but I’ve got someone here who wants to see you again. We’ve just had brunch at the Brevoort and we thought we’d stroll across Washington Square to see if you were home.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re both welcome— Christ! What are you doing back in town?”

  “Just paying my annual call on Mr. Paul Cornelius Van Zale.” A tall dark man wandered casually past Terence into the living room. He had a hard jaw, heavy-lidded eyes and a flat, battered, vaguely sinister face. When he saw me he stopped, raised a thick eyebrow and allowed the lids to droop lazily over his yellowish brown eyes. “Why, hello there!” he drawled sociably. “We haven’t met, have we? My name’s Greg Da Costa.”

  “Dinah!” exclaimed Bruce before I could register any emotion whatsoever. “What are you doing here?”

  “Weeping on Terence’s shoulder,” I said. “I’ve just had the most awful row with Paul.” It occurred to me that I was dangerously lightheaded. With growing suspicion I looked down at my martini.

  “Paul who?” said Greg Da Costa.

  “As far as we’re all concerned there’s only one Paul,” said Bruce. “This is Dinah Slade, Greg. She’s in New York as Paul’s guest.”

  “You mean this is the latest victim? Welcome to the club, sweetheart!”

  “I’m nobody’s victim,” I said abruptly. “Terence, I think I’d better go now.”

  Terence looked as though he agreed with me, but before he could speak Da Costa said with a surfeit of well-oiled charm, “Hell, don’t run away–what’s the rush? I can tell you all kinds of things about your pal Paul!”

  Terence stepped instantly between us. “Dinah’s too modern to enjoy past history, Greg. How’s Stew? Don’t tell me you came to New York without your brother!”

  Da Costa’s face seemed more battered than ever. “Stew’s dead.”

  “Dead? My God! How the hell did it happen?”

  “He took a slug at one of those private detectives Van Zale has keeping watch over us, and the goddamned dick drew a gun and cracked him over the head with it. They got him to a hospital, but his skull was smashed and he never came out of the coma. That’s why I’m here. I figured Van Zale owed me compensation and I hit town yesterday evening so that I can see him in person tomorrow.”

  “It was planned, obviously,” said Bruce tensely to Terence. “The man provoked Stewart into attacking him—probably on Paul’s orders.”

  “That’s nonsense!” I cried horrified. “Bruce, how could you even think such a thing!”

  “Have a martini, Bruce,” said Terence, “and wise up. You’re showing about as much delicacy as an elephant on eggshells. Dinah, if you want to go I’ll come downstairs and find you a cab.”

  “I’m with Bruce on this,” said Da Costa. “Someone should tell this little girl the facts of life. Say, talking of Van Zale, Bruce tells me he’s been sick as hell lately and you guys in the entourage are having a tough time keeping the facts under wraps—”

  “Dinah,” said Terence, “I’m sure you have no interest in hearing the latest gaudy rumors about how your friend’s suffering from everything from acne to cancer of the brain. Let’s go.”

  “He’s stringing you along, sweetheart!” called Da Costa after me as we escaped downstairs. “What’s the big game, Terence?”

  We emerged into the street.

  “What on earth—” I began incredulously but he cut me off.

  “I’m sorry about that, Dinah.” He sounded genuinely distracted. “I don’t know how much Mr. Van Zale’s told you about the Salzedo affair, but—”

  “Oh, that! Yes, I know Jason Da Costa blew his brains put and his sons went around afterwards making mad accusations against Paul. Obviously nothing’s changed! But Terence, I wasn’t going to ask about Greg Da Costa. I was going to ask what on earth someone so nice as Bruce is doing in his company.”

  “Yes, Bruce is a nice guy.” He sighed and added with reluctance: “I’m afraid the t
ruth is that he’s irrational on the subject of Mr. Van Zale. He always has been, ever since I first met him at Harvard, but lately for some reason the irrationality’s become more marked. I tend to humor him on the subject because I’ve realized he can’t help himself. He’s all mixed up about his mother.”

  “Oh, God!” I felt too exhausted to grapple with Freudian theory, but fortunately at that moment a taxi came around the corner.

  “Will you be all right?” said Terence, flagging down the car. “Sorry our conference got wrecked like that. I’ll call you later and we can fix another.”

  “I think we’d already said all there was to say.”

  “You can’t mean you’re going to give up and go home!”

  “It’s either that or ditch my self-respect. Oh, what does it matter to you anyway! Whether I go or stay he’ll never leave her.”

  I was in such a morose mood by that time that I forgot to thank him for the martinis, and after I had been borne bumpily uptown by a surly driver my mood had hardly improved. Trailing into the apartment hotel, I was in such a haze of gloom that I did not at first hear the desk clerk calling my name.

  “Letter for you, Miss Slade!” he called a second time.

  I was thinking of Paul and wondering if I could live like a nun until he was able to swear he no longer slept with Sylvia. But no, that would never work because he would never weaken; I had no choice but to slink home without him, although perhaps I could salvage some pride by staying to the end of my allotted time in New York in order to produce the cosmetics survey I had promised my friends. But no, that would save my face but probably not my sanity, and I simply had to leave while I still had the mental strength to turn my back on him.

  Feeling utterly devoid of all strength, I opened the envelope and dragged out the message inside.

  “My dearest Lesbia,” Paul had written, recalling all our past classical correspondence. “I’ve taken Alan and Miss Oakes to our Plaza suite for lunch to make amends for interrupting their breakfast this morning. Will you please join us? Repentantly, Catullus.”